The pandemic, and in particular the lockdown in the spring, has prompted an increase in the creation of new domains.

The recommendation for people to work from home and the impossibility of attending to customers in traditional establishments mean that so far this year the number of newly created websites is up by 20% in Europe, with e-commerce accounting for a large volume.

The data for the whole of Europe is handled by the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR), whose goal is to promote and participate in the development of high standards for Internet Country Code Top-Level Domain Registries (ccTLDs), in other words, the two-letter domains corresponding to countries.

For instance, .es domains (Spain) reached the same levels as in 2013, while .it domains (Italy) reached record figures, with over 60,000 new domains registered.

With the exception of August (summer in the northern hemisphere and consequently in Europe), the volume of registrations was high and averaged 0.9% in the last quarter (some 3.4% over the last 12 months).

At the peak of the first lockdown, newly created domains rose by 20% compared to the same period last year. Though some doubt remains as to whether this can be attributed to the pandemic, if it was the case, it would be a matter of checking whether these domains are renewed once the health crisis is over.

The average number of .barcelona domain renewals is up by 10% compared to last year, and 3% compared to 2018. This figure means we can affirm that although domain loyalty is reasonably high, there is still room for it to improve.